The Answer Is In The Beat

John Wiese: Magnetic Stencil 1-3 LPs (Helicopter/Troniks, 2020-2021/vinyl reissues by Gilgongo, 2023)

July 30, 2023 at 4:17 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

John Wiese’s Magnetic Stencil series, released on CD a few years ago and now pressed to vinyl, consists of lengthy collage pieces featuring sonic contributions from an extensive list of noise and experimental visionaries, including Aaron Dilloway, C. Spencer Yeh, C. Lavender, Lasse Marhaug, and Gilgongo’s James Fella. That’s about half the guest list on the first volume alone. Also, the first 2 parts were composed and mixed in one day, and the third was created on another. How?!?! There’s so much going on during these records. Wiese always has fascinating ways of combining controlled, sudden bursts of sound with space, so that everything sounds clear even when it’s noisy and chaotic. Sounds shift between varying levels of clarity, across multiple layers and channels, with tape sputter, deformed human voices, and broken, struggling frequencies all appearing at will. A smudged, slowed down rhythm worms its way into the picture near the end of the first side, and I’m guessing Dilloway had something to do with it, but there’s no way of telling for sure. After it disappears, several layers of metallic buzzing emerge, and some how it’s elevating instead of headache-inducing. Side B starts out with some A Big 10-8 Place-like voices that are zapped and splashed to oblivion. It then slithers between more tape-fried voices, more metallic vibrations, delicate string plucks, and blankets of jammed frequencies. More delicate but sharp bowing and buzzing is intercut with fluttering feedback, mutated whispers, and alien messages from dozens of different angles. There’s something symphonic about the way these sounds are paced until they converge into a violent roar. Totally bewildering.

Volume 2 features Dilloway, T. Mikawa, Joe Potts, and Robert Turman. A little different than the sporadic interjections of the first volume, this one starts out as a sort of terror scene, with dense walls of noise blazing, slowly shifting to reveal exactly what type of damage is being caused. Jammed tapes cause sudden whiplash, support systems strain and crack. A house of horrors is engulfed in flames. The second side is less panic-stricken, at least at first. It moves a lot more slowly, but it’s clearly haunted, and there are moments that bleed into heavy harshness. Mostly it’s just vast, sooty layers with buried voices, industrious hissing, and moments when half-forgotten music bubbles through. Somehow near the end, the acoustics suggest that this might be a live performance. If it was, the very end might have been something like Hanatarash bulldozing a venue.

Volume 3 features Tim Kinsella, Howard Stelzer, John Collins McCormick, and several others. Another haunted house of abrasive tape manipulations and rumbling acoustic noises, this time with some more kitchen-like sounds sprinkling and smashing in near the beginning. Some half-sliced voices semi-sing near the end of side 1, almost as if they can only communicate their message by being extremely distorted. Then a cartoonish thwack kicks it out like a football. The second side is a fog of spacey delay, pretzel twist feedback fuzz, and voices nearly ground into dust. There’s moments that elevate further, particularly the counting voice in the middle and the atmospheric drift that follows after it. Then it ends up with a particularly impressive homemade rocket blast for its ending.

Golden Feelings: Better Weather (self-released, 2023)

July 23, 2023 at 4:06 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The newest album from Golden Feelings (Dustin Krcatovich) contains recordings of “Better Weather”, a piece performed using a matrix of 64 loops, including software instruments, live instruments, and field recordings. Randomly selected cards serve as graphic scores, indicating when to use “active” and “passive” loops. The piece is never performed the same way twice. Two recordings are included along with a short interlude. There’s other generative music pieces you could compare this sort of method to, but it’s more important to just focus on the music and what’s happening and how it makes you feel. The first part mostly sounds like walking through a natural area basking in bright sunlight, and eventually happening upon a gently flowing stream. The water sounds are easy to hear, but there’s also some very soft, infrequent beats audible if you turn it up loud enough, maybe like distant footprints or objects falling from trees. The second version feels a bit lighter, a bit glassier, a bit more distant and perhaps more imaginary.

The Gray Field Recordings: She Sleeps to the Sound of Knives (AntiClock Records, 2023)

July 15, 2023 at 8:17 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

R. Loftiss’s avant-folk project returns after more than a decade since their last album. I actually haven’t listened to them before, but they were on the Gold Leaf Branches comp on Digitalis back in 2005, and had CD-Rs on labels like Reverb Worship. There’s elements of Coil alchemy, but also Natural Snow Buildings drone-folk and surreal collage poetry, incorporating unique instruments and sometimes children’s voices. “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is the album’s 18-minute centerpiece, and it’s a cryptic, hypnotic web of sometimes-reversed text, dulcimer vibrations, and cracked transmissions. “Verdant Green” has sharp clanging for percussion but has a sort of sweet vocal melody, making it one of the most inviting moments on the album. “Sex Flowers” starts out with whirring noises that sound like bees buzzing, then has sensual poetry, rubbery synths, and thumpy beats at the end. “Who Will Bright the Light?” is a much darker, more haunting drone, and then the sparse, creeping title track is as disturbing as its title. Lastly, “Wilderness Takes Over” begins delicate and intimate, then ends up unhinged and noisy, but the glowing synth trail makes it feel like it’s staying on a tightrope during a storm.

Gate: The Numbers LP (Birdman, 2023)

July 12, 2023 at 7:52 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

First released last year on Bandcamp, this 2012 recording from Michael Morley of the Dead C has now been pressed to vinyl thanks to Birdman. Morley dials his drum machine down to a click, making it imitate a lethargic drummer, and his guitar blusters and blares on top of it as if he’s setting off smoke bombs every time he touches the strings. The vocals stumble through the fog just as much, and it all feels like someone barely holding their mind together. The rudimentary drum machine really helps guide the current here, if it was a real drummer the musician would probably have the urge to over-play or freak out, and it just works better as a dead, stiff trudge like this. “Land” has a particular way of making the mind fuzzy, and then “Clouds Again” has something resembling a trip-hop beat, which throws things out of wack even further. “Film Envy” has some of the most overwhelming, overdriven noise on the album, and it finds a clever way to escape at the end.

v/a: Raymond Scott Reimagined (Violinjazz Recordings, 2023)

July 1, 2023 at 3:55 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Bandleader, pianist, saxophonist, and former Warner Brothers Animation composer Gordon Goodwin presents new arrangements of some of Raymond Scott’s most well-known compositions — the ones you’ve heard in cartoons your entire life. Most of the songs are performed by Gordon’s Big Phat Band and Quartet San Francisco, with vocal sextet Take 6 joining in on a few numbers. I’ve listened to Reckless Nights & Turkish Twilights more times than I can count, and these are faithful but still exquisitely performed, embellished arrangements of the songs. Of course “Powerhouse” kicks off the show, and the main melody is quoted a few other times throughout the program, including on the next track, one of several selections of Raymond Scott interviews backed with newly recorded music. “Toy Trumpet” has a nice bit at the end that switches through a few brief, distinct parts, with a very low-attention-span cartoon feel. “Cutey and the Dragon” is actually an unfinished Scott tune written for his granddaughter, finished by Goodwin (but also borrowing bits from “Powerhouse”) and given a big band reading that has all the whimsy of Scott’s classics. “The Quintette Goes to a Dance”, which has a bit of a Western swing feel to it, is preceded by an interview clip in which Scott doesn’t remember making a song with that title. “Twilight in Turkey” goes all out with a stage-ready arrangement, while “Serenade” is a gentle, harp-driven lullaby.